Ashcroft reverses Reno order on assisted-suicide doctors

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft directed federal drug agents to take action against doctors who help terminally ill patients die, a move aimed at undercutting Oregon's assisted-suicide law.

The decision, outlined in a letter sent Tuesday to Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson, allows the revocation of drug prescription licenses of doctors who participate in an assisted suicide using a federally controlled substance. However, it does not authorize criminal prosecution. Ashcroft's order reverses a June 1998 declaration by his predecessor, Janet Reno, who barred agents from moving against doctors who use Oregon's law.

Ashcroft said assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for prescribing, dispensing or administering federally controlled substances. However, he said pain management is a valid medical use of controlled substances.

Religious groups and anti-abortion organizations hailed the move by Ashcroft, whose nomination as attorney general nearly was scuttled by critics who said his strong conservative views would cloud his judgment.

The National Right to Life Committee said the decision ensures that doctors in all 50 states cannot legally prescribe lethal doses of federally controlled drugs.

But Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a strong proponent of the assisted-suicide law, said Ashcroft's order "is undoing Oregon's popular will in the most undemocratic manner possible. Americans in every corner of the nation are going to suffer needlessly."

Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon attorney general's office, said the state will file motions in U.S. District Court in Portland on Wednesday seeking to head off Ashcroft's order.

Ashcroft based his decision on a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in May that said there is no exception in federal drug laws for the medical use of marijuana to ease pain from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses.

The court didn't change state laws allowing patients to use marijuana for medical reasons, but made the drug harder to obtain by denying patients the right to claim "medical necessity" as a reason to circumvent a 1970 law regulating controlled substances.

Under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, doctors may provide -- but not administer -- a lethal prescription to terminally ill adult state residents.